
Class 
Rook 


.c.-^Ti3 







A DISCOURSE 



PRONOUNCED AT BARNSTABLE 



ON THE THIRD OF SEPTEMBER, 1839, 



AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 



3-7/ 



SECOND CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 



OF THE 



SETTLEMENT OF CAPE COD. 



Br JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. 



BOSTON: 

FERDINAND ANDREWS, 
1840. 



7^ 



-^1 3 



Li cTch'^.nr'^ 
MAR 2 9 m3 



CAMBRIDGE: 

FOLSOM, WELLS, AND THURSTON, 

PRINTERS TO THE UNITERSITT. 



DISCOURSE. 



We are assembled to celebrate, with suitable obser- 
vance, the two hundredth anniversary of the legal or- 
ganization of a civilized community on the peninsula 
of Cape Cod. It was in the summer or autumn of 
1639, and, according to a credible account, on the 
third day of September, that an act of the General 
Court of Plymouth Colony incorporated the town of 
Barnstable ; which accordingly is found to have dep- 
uties present at the next quarterly Court, held in 
December of that year.* The incorporation of Sand- 
wich and Yarmouth, it seems, had already taken 
place, as they were represented at the Court held in 
the preceding June, the first after the adoption of the 

* To the reasons assigned in the Report of the town's Committee, May 
8th, 1839, for fixing on the third day of September, as the date of the in- 
corporation, the following may be added. A vote of the General Court 
of Plymouth, passed on the 1st of January, 1634, determined that the 
Courts should thenceforward be holden " upon the first Tuesday in every 
month, viz. March, June, September, and December ; " and the first Tues- 
day of September, 1639, fell on the third day of that month, Old Style. 



4 



representative form of government in the place of 
meetings of the whole body of freemen. From these 
three towns, which, with the four others of earlier 
settlement, namely, Plymouth, Duxbury, Scituate, 
and Taunton, then constituted the whole of the Ply- 
mouth jurisdiction, the plantations, in process of 
time, were extended to the extreme point, in what 
is now Provincetown. And when, in the year 1685, 
the territory of Plymouth, having then a population, 
it is probable, of about eight thousand souls, was 
set off into three counties, the Cape towns were 
made to constitute the County of Barnstable, as 
they have continued to do to the present time. 

The Committee, at whose invitation I occupy this 
place, know the strong misgivings with which I un- 
dertook a service otherwise on every account most 
grateful and welcome, because of my inability, for 
reasons stated to them, to do it even that poor justice, 
to which, under more favorable circumstances, I 
might have been competent. But, being here, I will 
take up none of your time with apologies, nor use 
any further preface, except to say, that, if my hearers 
find themselves called upon to honor a longer draft 
upon their patience than either they or I would have 
wished, it is simply because, as Erasmus said of his 
too long letter to a friend, " 1 had not the time to be 
shorter." 



This great concourse bears witness at once to the 
inherent interest of the occasion which has invited 
it, and declares that there is no insensibility to that 
interest on the part of those, to whom belongs the 
precious joint inheritance of the good name of a brave 
and godly ancestry. We are no such unworthy sons 
of worthy fathers, that we could be content to have 
this day see us anywhere but by the gentis cunabula 
nostrtB, the cradle of the now wide-spread race, or to 
have it see us assembled here only as cold spectators 
of a pompous pageant. No ; 1 am sure, that I only 
express the thought, which is uppermost in every 
bosom that claims an hereditary share in this day's 
commemoration, when I say for myself, that no 
earthly bribe would tempt me to resign the knowl- 
edge, if it could be resigned, that I belong to the lin- 
eage of those staunch and true men, who sowed the 
seeds of that harvest, which two centuries have been 
ripening in this excellently productive region of Cape 
Cod. Productive, I make free to call it. Unprom- 
ising, penurious, it may look upon the surface. 
Largely bountiful, however, it has proved itself in 
the best abundance, that of sense and virtue. 

Some of us have lived, as they were born, near to 
the spot where we are assembled. Others, from 
their wanderings to and fro, come to-day to do it 
reverence as the native soil, from which they drew 



principles and habits, that have made them prosper- 
ous and honored wherever they have gone to seek 
their fortunes in the wide world. To the hearts of 
others yet, who may not claim it as their birthplace, 
it is hallowed by moving associations as the home 
of beloved parents or revered forefathers ; and in 
this class I include our friends, who have gathered 
with us from the neighbouring towns to keep this fes- 
tival ; for who is there of them, that has not blood in 
his veins from this our copious Barnstable fountain ? 
In short, here we are, fellow-citizens and friends, a 
band of brothers and sisters, — of cousins, at the fur- 
thest, — seated, a widely-gathered family meeting, 
on the broad and hospitable ancestral hearth-stone. 
We meet in hearty good-will ; and we do not mean to 
separate till we have made each other's better ac- 
quaintance, talking over old times so sociably to- 
gether, that, parting, we may go again on our several 
ways, rejoicing in and profited by the interview, 
more concerned for each other's good fortune and 
honor, and more ambitious, one and all, to do credit 
to the stout stock we grew upon. 

In proceeding to tell that old world's tale, with 
which alone the occasion prompts the lips of the 
speaker, it will be necessary for me, in order to keep 
any terms with the extent of the subject, to confine 
myself, for the most part, to events of which the town 



of Barnstable has been the scene ; and, still further, 
to limit my observations to a few prominent periods 
in its history. And in this latter particular of the 
course proposed, I shall feel the rather justified, 
because I think it will be found, that, at critical 
periods, this town has always come forward to take 
its full share in public measures and responsibilities ; 
while, in quiet and prosperous times, it has been con- 
tent to give a quiet attention to its own affairs, still 
doing well its own work in the world, but contribut- 
ing few materials for history. 

The southern cape of Massachusetts Bay has been 
known to navigators since the year 1602. On the 
fifteenth day of May in that year, Bartholomew 
Gosnold, on a voyage from Falmouth in England to 
the north part of Virginia (a name which early in- 
cluded almost all the territory now known as New 
England), saw a headland in the forty-second degree 
of north latitude, near to which he anchored, and, 
catching there " great store of cod-fish," named it 
Cape Cod. When, in 1620, the first company of Pil- 
grims, in the Mayflower, were treacherously brought 
far north of their destination, which was to Hudson's 
River, the first land which they made was Cape 
Cod ; and, in the harbour of Provincetown, on the 
eleventh day of November, old style, was executed 
that document, which, realizing, for the first time in 



8 



the world's history, the philosophical fiction of a So- 
cial Compact, became the basis of their colony gov- 
ernment. 

In July, 1621, Barnstable harbom- was visited by 
a party of ten men from Plymouth, in a shallop, 
commanded by Captain Miles Standish. They came 
in quest of a boy, who had been lost in the woods, 
and who, it appeared, had fallen in with a party of 
Indians, and been conducted by them to Nauset, 
now Eastham. They were courteously received by 
the young sachem of the territory, who was named 
lyanough. He accompanied them to Nauset, and, 
having aided them to accomplish the object of 
their expedition, dismissed them, after many mutual 
pledges of friendship. Subsequently, frequent excur- 
sions were made hy the Plymouth people to Cumma- 
quid and Matakiest, both which names belonged to 
what is now included in Barnstable, for the purpose 
of obtaining corn from the natives. 

There were some English settlers here as early as 
1638, as an order of the Plymouth Court, for that 
year, appointing men in each town and plantation to 
exercise the people in arms, assigns that charge to 
Thomas Dimmock for Barnstable. But the number 
probably was small ; and the body of the early plant- 
ers belonged to the Scituate church, which (or rather 
a majority of its members), with its minister, the 



Reverend Mr. John Lothrop, emigrated from that 
town to this, arriving liere on the eleventh day of 
October, 1639. 

This circumstance makes the First Church in 
Barnstable the representative of the first Congrega- 
tional church established in England, unless, which 
perhaps was the fact, the church of John Robin- 
son, now surviving in that of Plymouth, was organ- 
ized on Congregational principles before he left the 
mother country for Holland. Mr. Henry Jacob, a 
clergyman of the English Church, who had written 
a book against the English Congregationalists, or, as 
they were then called, Brownists, who were in exile 
on the continent, going over to Leyden, and falling 
in there with Robinson, ended by embracing his 
principles of church order and discipline. Returning 
home he established, in 1616, a society after the 
Congregational model, and ministered to it himself 
eight years ; at the end of which time, departing to 
Virginia, he was succeeded in his place by Mr. 
John Lothrop, a graduate of the University of Oxford, 
who, like himself, had been in episcopal orders. At 
the end of eight years more, the congregation, which, 
of course, conducted its worship in strict privacy, was 
discovered, by the bishop's pursuivant, at the house 
of a brewer's clerk in Black-Friars, London. Forty- 
two persons were apprehended ; eighteen escaped. 



10 



Those who were taken were confined in different 
prisons for two years, and were then released upon 
bail, except their minister, for whom no favor could 
be obtained. " During the time of his imprison- 
ment," — this is the simple record of Morton, in his 
" Memorial," who wastes no words, for he had 
many such sad stories to tell, — " his wife fell sick, 
of which sickness she died. He procured liberty of 
the bishop to visit his wife before her death, and 
commended her to God by prayer, who soon after 
gave up the ghost. At his return to prison, his poor 
children, being many, repaired to the bishop at Lam- 
beth, and made known unto him their miserable con- 
dition, by reason of their good father's being con- 
tinued in close durance, who commiserated their 
condition so far as to grant him liberty, who soon 
after came over into New England." What a pic- 
ture of the condition of those melancholy times ! 
that meek witness for Christ obtaining, as a great 
boon, the privilege of going to make one prayer by 
his dying wife's bed-side ; those poor orphan children 
drying their eyes with their mother's shroud, to go and 
implore of the bishop's clemency, that he would let 
their widowed father out of a loathsome gaol, on 
condition that he would betake himself to the ends 
of the earth, never more to lift a voice for his Master 
within the realm of England. 



11 



Another interesting fact, connected with that prim- 
itive English Congregational church, which still sur- 
vives in our church at Great Marshes, is, that from 
its bosom also proceeded the first English Baptist 
church ; so that it is further entitled to the eminent 
rank of parent of the now very numerous churches 
of that denomination, both in England and America. 
It was in Mr. Lothrop's church, that the question 
respecting the authority for infant baptism was first 
moved in England, and it was seceders from that 
church who laid the foundation of this respectable 
communion. 

Mr. Lothrop, leaving Mr. Canne, still well known 
as the author of the marginal references to the Bible, 
to minister to the portion of his flock which re- 
mained in England, came, with the principal part of 
it, to this country, landing at Boston, on the 18th of 
September, 1634. He proceeded in a few days to 
Scituate, where a meetinghouse had previously been 
erected, and there, to use the phrase of those days, 
he was presently "called to office," being the prede- 
cessor there of President Chauncy. Five years he 
remained in Scituate, during which time the differ- 
ences respecting the rite of baptism, which had di- 
vided his friends in England, manifested themselves 
also there ; and partly, it is probable, on this account, 
as well as for the distinctly alleged reason of a view 



12 



to the benefit of " the hay-grounds," — that is, on 
the Great Marshes, — he resolved to emigrate with 
the majority of his church to this place. Their first 
destination had been to Seipigan, now Rochester, 
and lands had there been assigned to them. But 
this spot was their maturer preference. 

I know not, that there was any thing to distin- 
guish the planters of Barnstable from the rest of 
those good men, who, escaping from the civil and 
ecclesiastical oppression which was grinding them in 
their English home, formed the early settlements of 
New England. It is enough to say in their praise, 
that they belonged to that noble company. Arrived 
here, such information as can be gathered from the 
town books respecting their pursuits, shows that 
these were for the most part agricultural, and that 
it was only by degrees, that the advantages of their 
situation for the employments of fishing and of navi- 
gation were perceived and turned to account, as they 
have been so largely in later times. Most of the 
records of that early period relate to titles to land, 
as purchased from the Indians, granted by the town 
to single inhabitants, and passing from hand to hand 
among them. The principle of original distribution 
of both meadow and uplands, it appears, was, that 
one third part of the common property should be 
assigned " in equal parts to every house-lot " ; one 



13 



third part, " according to men's estates " ; and the 
other third part, " to the number of names" that 
were " immovable,''^ that is, to such residents in the 
plantation as were married, or were twenty-four 
years of age. No one was allowed to purchase land 
of the natives on his private account. With them 
the whole intercourse was, from first to last, of the 
most amicable character. Not only were the town 
and county of Barnstable entitled to their full share 
in the boast of Governor Winslow, when, in 1675, 
he said, " Before the present troubles broke out, the 
English did not possess one foot of land in the colo- 
ny, but what was fairly obtained by honest pur- 
chase of the Indian proprietors ; " but I cannot learn, 
that, at any time since the settlement, a single act 
of hostility has taken place, within the limits of the 
county, between the planters and the natives. 

The Indians sold their land, it is true, for what 
seems to us a very small consideration. But this 
implies no overreaching on the part of the purchasers. 
The first conveyance, of which the conditions are par- 
ticularly recorded, was made in the year 1644, when 
Serunk, an Indian " dwelling on the South Sea," sells 
and makes over to the town of Barnstable " all the 
lands and meadow lying betwixt the bounds of Sand- 
wich and the bounds of Paxit," another Indian, in 
consideration of " four coats and three axes " ; and 



14 



there are other transactions of similar tenor. But, if 
the Indian received but little in such bargains, what 
was it, let us ask, that he gave ? Not the regular, 
permanent occupation of the soil ; tliis, from his 
idle and roving habits, he never enjojed, and did 
not care for ; but simply the privilege of taking 
fish and game, now at this spot, and now at that, 
within the limits of the tract conveyed. And even 
this privilege he sometimes reserved, in which case 
all that he obtained by the barter was so much clear 
gain. For instance, in 1648, Paupnumuck, Sachem 
of South Sea, " with the consent of his brother, and 
all the rest of his associates, bargains and sells to 
Miles Standish, in the behalf and for the use of the 
inhabitants of Barnstable, all his and their lands 
facing upon South Sea, a little beyond a brook, 
called the First Herring Brook westward, to Nepoy- 
etum's and Seagumuck's land northward, excepting 
thirty acres [which he reserves for himself and his 
associates], and butting home to lyanno's land east- 
ward." * This he conveys in consideration of " two 
brass kettles, one bushel of Indian corn, and one 
half part of so much fence as will fence in the 
aforesaid thirty acres of land, to be made by the 
inhabitants." Then follows the proviso, that Paup- 



* " lyanno's land " is the same tract, which now, by a corruption of 
the name, is known as Hyannis. 



15 



numuck and his associates " shall have free leave 
and liberty to hunt in the said lands and set traps," 
which, with their thirty neighbouring acres for wig- 
wams, was doubtless all the use they would have 
wished to make of the land, had they continued to 
hold it in fee. While they kept substantially what 
they always had had, they got their fence, their 
kettles, and corn ; and they probably gave themselves 
credit for having the advantage of the new-comers 
in that bargain. 

Mr. Lothrop died November 8th, 1633. By his 
will he gave to his wife one house in Barnstable, 
to his son Thomas another, and to his sons John 
in England and Benjamin here, each a cow and live 
pounds; "daughters Jane and Barbara," he says, 
" having had their portion already." To each of his 
other children he gave a cow, and to each child 
" one book, to be chosen according to their ages ; " 
the rest of his library he ordered to be " sold to any 
honest man, who could tell how to use it," and the 
proceeds to be divided. Morton, in his " Memorial," 
describes him as " a man of an humble and broken 
heart and spirit ; lively in dispensation of the word 
of God ; studious of peace ; furnished with godly 
contentment ; willing to spend and be spent for the 
cause and church of Christ." Among his eminent 
descendants were the late Reverend Dr. Lathrop of 



16 



West Springfield and Dr. Lathrop of Boston, and 
the Honorable Samuel Lathrop, recently President 
of the Senate of Massachusetts. Prince nannes, 
among the manuscripts used by him in his " Chro- 
nological History," an " original register, wrote by 
the Reverend Mr. John Lothrop, recording the first 
affairs both of Scituate and Barnstable." But I 
suppose, that nothing is known of the fate of that 
precious document, and that there is no ground for 
hope, that it will ever be recovered. 

Tradition designates the great rock in the high- 
way, a little more than two miles west from us, near 
Mr. Isaac Hinckley's brick house, as the place of 
worship in the early part of Mr. Lothrop's ministry, 
as well as the place for elections, and for transact- 
ing the civil affairs of the town. A portion of that 
memorable rock was removed a few years ago, being 
thought to overhang the road in a dangerous man- 
ner. It was, however, happily only a portion ; and 
it is to be presumed, that the fathers of the town 
will take care, that it be never molested again, ex- 
cept on some extreme occasion. The first meeting- 
house, of the erection of which we find any record, 
stood about a mile and a quarter west from this 
spot, on the west side of the old burying-ground. 
Four acres for a house-lot had been assigned to Mr. 
Lothrop soon after his arrival, on the eastern side 



17 



of that inclosure, which had probably been used for 
interments from the first settlement. After the first 
five years of Mr. Lothrop's ministry, he was assisted 
for several years by Mr. Mayo, afterwards of Boston. 
From Mr. Lothrop's death there was no settled min- 
istry for ten years ; at the end of which time Mr, 
Thomas Walley was ordained, whom, say the church 
records, and Morton, who copies them, " the Lord 
was pleased to make a blessed peace-maker, and to 
improve him in the work of his house there, until 
March 24th, 1678, and then he called him out of 
this earthly tabernacle into a house not made with 
hands." Mr. Walley (who left children here, one 
of whom, Major John Walley, commanded the land 
forces in the expedition against Canada, under Sir 
William Phips, in 1690,) was succeeded, September 
16th, 1683, by the Reverend Jonathan Russell, son of 
that Russell, minister of Hadley, who for a time af- 
forded a hiding-place in his cellar to Goffe, one of 
the fugitive judges of King Charles. Our venerable 
friend, Mr. Isaiah Green, here present, is the rep- 
resentative of that excellent stock ; his grandmother, 
wife of the Reverend Joseph Green, afterwards min- 
ister of the east parish, having been a daughter of 
the second Jonathan Russell, son and successor of 
him whom I just now named. 
3 



18 



The company, which came from Scituate to this 
place, numbered twenty-five men. In 1641, some 
families were added from Lynn. In 1643, forty-five 
names of men are recorded ; and in 1670, eightj^- 
nine. In 1655, and the five or six following years, 
the Quakers occasioned much disturbance, and some 
dissension, in this as well as other parts of the colo- 
ny ; some good and influential men, among whom was 
Walley, the minister, being dissatisfied with the meas- 
ures of severity towards them, which the majority 
thought it necessary to adopt. With this exception, 
as far as it appears, the afiairs of the town and county 
kept on, quite evenly, the noiseless tenor of their way, 
till the year 1675, the date of the outbreak of the 
dreadful conflict so well known in New England his- 
tory by the name of King Philip^s War. I say, as 
far as appears, such was the fact ; for our Barnstable 
fathers were men of such business-like habits, they 
had so little taste for parade, and were so uncon- 
scious of the figure which what they were doing and 
suffering was suited to make in the eyes of pos- 
terity, that one may look through the records be- 
longing to a period known from other sources to have 
been beset with all sons of hardship and peril, and, 
unless there was something which needed to be 
brought to the test of a vote in town meeting, he 
shall find not the slightest allusion to the momen- 



19 



tous events, which every burdened and anxious day 
was brinirins forth. He turns these faded leaves to 
find some note of the spasmodic struggles, which 
were made in every high place and every low place, 
throughout the sad borders of the Plymouth Colony, 
to meet the dreaded Indian enemy ; of the anguish 
which was brought daily into these village homes, by 
tidings from the distant field ; and all that meets his 
eye, on the scantily covered page, is some proper, no 
doubt, but to us insignificant matter of municipal 
regulation, some law for the branding of sheep, the 
yoking of swine, or repairs upon the highway. 

From two or three incidental facts, however, of the 
most agreeable character, we infer what direction the 
industry of the Cape towns had already taken, during 
the first forty years of their existence. We learn, 
from the Plymouth records, that in June, 1673, the 
excise on Cape Cod mackerel, — the excise, not the 
bounty, as in these better days for the fisheries, — 
was lessened, to citizens, from twelve pence to six 
pence, and, to foreigners, from two shillings to one 
shilling, on the barrel ; and in the same year, the 
revenue from the Cape fishery was permanently ap- 
propriated to the support of Grammar School instruc- 
tion ; — could our cod and mackerel, fellow-citizens, 
have been put to a better use ? Our Nantucket 
friends are now proud, and justly, of their whale 



20 



fishery, the adventurous enterprise of which extorted 
the magnificent eulogy of Edmund Burke. We have 
no grudge against the laurels which they have earned 
so well, and wear so gracefully. But neither would 
we have them forget the beginning of their greatness. 
Like so many other good things, the skill of their 
death-play with the sea monster is to be traced to 
the practice of our Barnstable fathers. In their 
records for 1690, they may find it written; "One 
Ichabod Paddock came from Cape Cod, to instruct 
the people in the art of killing whales." 

None who are listening to me need to be told, that 
rarely has any people passed through a crisis of dis- 
may and suffering, like what befell these infant colo-r 
nies, in their life-struggle against the Indian confed- 
eracy, arranged by the Sachem of Mount Hope. 
Rarely has what was to be done and borne been in 
such immense disproportion to the means possessed. 
The political talent and energy of Philip were far 
above the standard, at which we are accustomed to 
rate the aboriginal races. He had succeeded in en- 
listing in his plot all the hitherto discordant, or, at 
least, jealously independent tribes, within the limits 
of New England, and in nerving them with the des- 
perate courage of a determination, that, the toma- 
hawk once raised, the issue should be extermination 
to the one party or the other. From the first rising, 



21 



the war swept, with its train of most unsparing hor- 
rors, wherever there was a white settlement, from 
the mountains to the bay, and from the St. Law- 
rence to Long Island Sound. The red man en- 
camped at night by the blaze of Christian dwellings, 
and rose in the morning to another quest of blood. 
The burning of Lancaster, and the slaughter of 
Bloody Brook, were no more than two of the most 
vivid of the rapidly shifting scenes of that awful 
tragedy. The Indian mood was not so much hate 
as frenzy ; 

" It spared not, in its murderous rage, 
Childhood, or womanhood, or age," 

The population of the four colonies, at the time, has 
been variously estimated at from thirty-six thousand 
to fifty thousand ; that of Plymouth was about seven 
thousand five hundred. The Indian tribes were 
around them and among them, over the whole length 
and breadth of New England. Under such circum- 
stances, common men would only have despaired. 
The colonists were not common men, and they did 
not despair. All seemed against them ; but they had 
stout English hearts, and stout yeomen's hands, and 
the protection of the availing prayers that went up 
from pious homes ; and, at length, by the blessing of 
the God of hosts, they triumphed. But it was a 
triumph won at almost intolerable cost. " About six 



22 



hundred," says Trumbull, "of the mhabitants of 
New England, the greatest part of whom were the 
flower and strength of the country, fell in battle, or 
were murdered by the enemy. A great part of the 
inhabitants of the country were in deep mourning. 
There were few families, which had not lost some 
near relation or friend. Twelve or thirteen towns in 
Massachusetts, Plymouth, or Rhode Island, were ut- 
terly destroyed, and others greatly damaged. About 
six hundred buildings, chiefly dwellinghouses, were 
consumed." The pecuniary burden of the war was 
so great, that the share of Plymouth Colony is be- 
lieved to have nearly or quite equalled the whole per- 
sonal property of its inhabitants. No considerable 
aid towards the discharge of this debt was received 
from abroad. Boston, after its manner in all times, 
and Connecticut, made donations ; and the city of 
Dublin sent a hundred and twenty-five pounds, the 
only contribution from the parent country. The 
pressure was such, as made the time of decisive tri- 
umph a time of profound gloom and distress. 

The vigor, with which this war was conducted on 
the part of the colonists, appears the more remark- 
able, and yields the more gratifying assurance of 
what there is in the transplanted English stock, 
which never is so lost by disuse, but that the proper 
circumstances will draw it out again, when we con- 



23 



sider, that the contest was conducted by men whose 
whole previous life had been passed in peaceful occu- 
pations. From 1624, when Stand ish had a skir- 
mish with the Indians near Weston's plantation, the 
Plymouth people had never been at war with the 
natives; though, in 1637, it is true they had raised 
levies to assist the Massachusetts colony, if need 
should be, against the Pequots. Nor, from the time 
of the Pequot war to that of King Philip, thirty-eight 
years, time enough for the former generation to pass 
away, had even the Massachusetts settlers had any 
experience in arms. 

Of the part, which the town of Barnstable bore 
in the deeds and sufferings of this terrible contest, 
there is nothing upon its records to inform us. Of 
the new levy, however, of three hundred Plymouth 
men, in the spring of 1676, Barnstable was called on 
for one-tenth part ; and in its share of the disburse- 
ments of one period of the war, which probably is to 
be taken for a sample of others, it is found to have 
been exceeded by only two other towns, namely, Scit- 
uate and Rehoboth. Matthew Fuller, captain of one 
of the Barnstable train-bands, was surgeon-general of 
the forces, and John Gorham, the first of the name in 
this place, commanded one of the two companies of 
the Plymouth contingent, in which service he died, 
towards the close of the expedition, of a fever, con- 



24 



tracted in its dreadful fatigues and exposures.* In 
the spring of 1676, the four Cape towns, Sandwich, 
Barnstable, Yarmouth, and Eastham, sent a deputa- 
tion to the inhabitants of the more exposed settle- 
ments of Rehoboth, Taunton, and Bridgewater, with 
a pressing invitation to come to them with their 
movable property. The answers to this proposal, 
which remain among the manuscripts of Governor 
Hinckley, in the Historical Society's Library, breathe 
such a grateful and devout spirit, as it delights one 
to contemplate. They call it " a great offer," and 
" return serious thanks for the sincere and abundant 
love " evinced by it, but decline to accept it, " lest," 
they say, " we should betray much diffidence and 
cowardice, and give the adversary occasion to tri- 
umph over us, to the reproach of that great and fear- 
ful name of God, that is called on us." 

My remarks on this early period have unintention- 
ally been so far extended, that it will be necessary 
to abridge what is to be said respecting the events of 

* John Goiham, bom in Benefield, Northamptonshire, was in Ply- 
mouth as early as 1643, The now numerous family of that name in this 
country are descended from him and his wife Desire, daugiiter of John 
Rowland and of his wife Elizabeth, who, according to the uniform Ply- 
mouth tradition, was a daughter of Governor Carver, born in England. 
The Plymouth Court made a grant of a hundred acres of that beautiful 
tract, called "Papasquash Neck," near Bristol, Rhode Island, to the heirs 
of Captain Gorham, "for as much as hee hath performed good service 
for the country in the late warr." 



25 



later times. Sixteen years after the close of Philip's 
war, on the 14th of May, 1692, Sir William Phips 
arrived in Boston, with the Provincial Charter of 
William and Mary, by virtue of which instrument, 
this town and county, with the rest of the old Ply- 
mouth Colony, became part of the Province of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay. It was natural, that a community, 
whose beginning and progress had been like that of 
Plymouth, should be averse to a change, that was 
to destroy its individual existence, and make it a 
mere appendage to a more populous and powerful 
commonwealth ; nor, at this day, is it possible to 
think, without strong sensibility, of the closing of a 
history, which, though of a population probably at no 
period more than thrice as great as that of this sin- 
gle town at the present time, has exerted such a 
vast influence on the condition of mankind, and as- 
sumed permanently such a conspicuous place in the 
world's annals. But, whatever natural feeling might 
dictate, practically there were no important evils in 
the measure, and some considerable benefits ; and 
the men of that time were candid and calm enough to 
see this; so that the new arrangement was acquiesced 
in with less discontent, than might have been antici- 
pated, and the more readily, as there had been an 
apprehension of a purpose, on the part of King Wil- 
liam's advisers, to annex the Plymouth Colony to 
4 



26 



that of New York. Plymouth could bear to be 
merged in the kindred English community of Massa- 
chusetts ; but to be fastened to the Dutch population 
of the other province was a different and less agree- 
able thing, though the Prince of Orange, who was 
now king of England, might not see the difficulty in 
the same serious light. 

At the time of the annexation of Plymouth to 
Massachusetts, Thomas Hinckley, of Barnstable, was 
governor of the former colony. He was a native of 
England, where he was born in the year 1618. Be- 
fore 1639, he had come over, with his father Samuel, 
to Scituate, and, as a member of his family, removed 
in that year to this place. From an early age, he 
was appointed to important trusts in the town affairs ; 
became a Deputy to the Colony Court as early as 
1645 ; and in 1658 was elected Assistant to the Gov- 
ernor. To this office he was annually reappointed 
till 1681, when he was advanced to the office of 
Governor, which office he sustained during the re- 
maining eleven years of the existence of the colony, 
with the exception of the three years of the usurpa- 
tion of Sir Edmund Andros. In 1675, 1676, 1678, 
and the fourteen following years, he was one of the 
two Commissioners for Plymouth in the Board of 
Commissioners of the United Colonies. He lived 
and died in a house which stood opposite to the pres- 



27 



ent dwelling of Mr. Jabez Nye, about two miles 
west from this place. His death, at the advanced 
age of eighty-eight, took place in 1706; and what 
of him was mortal lies interred in the upper burying- 
ground, marked by a stone which will continue to 
attract the steps of many and many a pilgrim, alive 
to the worth of our wise and good New England 
fathers. 

Governor Hinckley's course, distinguished, and, on 
the whole, prosperous as it was, was not without its 
vicissitudes and vexations. From some incidents of 
it, it is necessary to infer, that he was a man of much 
energy of purpose, which, when conciliation, — and 
that, too, not very abundant conciliation, — did not 
avail, was not averse to the use of urgency and co- 
ercion. He first came into the Board of Assistants 
on the ground of the strong part which he took 
against the Quakers, superseding Cudworth, who 
was for dealing with them more leniently. On the 
other hand, he did not escape the charge of undue 
pliancy in respect to one important measure, that of 
his consenting to take office under the administration 
of Andros. The same step, however, was taken by 
two of his townsmen, Thomas Walley and Barnabas 
Lothrop, who, like him, defended it as enabling them 
to exert an agency in staying the arbitrary proceed- 
ings of King James's governor ; and the honesty of 



28 



their plea cannot be doubted, whatever may be 
thought of the wisdom of the course. During this 
mournful period of misrule, the place which Governor 
Hinckley held in the administration did not prevent 
him from distinguishing himself, by the earnestness 
of his representations on the subject of existing evils, 
in a petition to the King ; nor does the part which 
he took in any of the transactions of the period ap- 
pear to have occasioned any permanent abatement 
of the public confidence. While the question of 
a separate charter for Plymouth was pending, he 
seems to have been wanting in no proper endeavour 
to bring about the measure ; and it was thought a 
great object to secure his services, had circumstances 
permitted, to proceed to England on the business. 
In what is said to his praise, it ought never to be 
omitted, that he had qualities to secure a matrimonial 
prize, such as, if the reports of the day are to be 
trusted, falls to the lot of few. His second wife, 
to whom he was united more than forty-three years, 
appears to have possessed a character excellently 
suited to correct the occasional impetuosity, — the 
acerbity, if so in any degree it were, — of his 
own. It was said of her by Prince, the historian, 
her grandson, that, " at Barnstable, she, to the day 
of her death, appeared and shone, in the eyes of all, 
as the loveliest and brightest woman, for beauty, 



29 



knowledge, wisdom, majesty, accomplishments, and 
graces, throughout the colony ; " and her husband's 
own tribute to her memory, written at the age of 
eighty-five, breathes not indeed the most tuneful 
spirit of song, but the very tenderest soul of affec- 
tion. A few of the lines are as follows ; 

" Death was no terror unto her, nor fear ; 
No ghasthness did in her face appear, 
But sweet composure, in her life, and death, 
When her dear soul she, in her final breath. 
Resigned to him whom she beheld in faith ; 
Whose own she was, and with him longed to be. 
Where she is free from sin and misery ; 
Is entered into perfect, endless rest, 
And with the blest above is ever blest." 

After Governor Hinckley, — if indeed we are to 
say after him, — there was no more eminent citizen 
of our town, during the term of the independence 
of Plymouth colony, than James Cudworth. I say, 
" of our town," because he was one of the company, 
which came, in 1639, with Mr. Lothrop, though he 
remained here only a few years. He was born in 
England, and was, in 1634, with the earliest settlers 
at Scituate ; after his return to which place, he was, 
in 1649, elected a Deputy to the General Court, and, 
in 1656, an Assistant to the Governor. In 1655 and 
1657, he w^as also a Commissioner of the United 
Colonies. In 1658, in consequence of his views of 
the public policy respecting the Quakers, views more 



30 



indulgent towards that sect than suited the spirit of 
the time, he was left out of the magistracy, being 
superseded by Hinckley, as I have already men- 
tioned, in his office of Assistant. At the accession, 
in 1673, of Governor Josiah Winslow, who reposed 
in him the highest confidence, he was appointed 
commander of an expedition against the settlement, 
at New York, of the Dutch, with whom a war 
seemed then impending. At the breaking out of 
King Philip's war, he was made commander of the 
Plymouth forces. In 1681, when Hinckley was 
chosen Governor, Cudvvorth succeeded him in the 
office of Deputy-Governor ; and, in the same year, 
was sent to England, to solicit a charter from the 
crown, in place of the patent from the Plymouth 
Company, which was all the authority the colony had 
yet had for administering its affairs. He died in 
London soon after his arrival. Mr. Baylies, in his 
History of the Old Colony, says, " The moral 
character of Cudworth stands out in bold relief. 

From the maxims of his pious philosophy, 

believing that he was not called by God to fill 
the high places of the state, he reconciled him- 
self to his obscurity and privacy, and preferred the 
retirement of his farm to the highest civic and mili- 
tary honors." Let me illustrate this modesty of his, 
and, at the same time, something of the domestic 



31 



habits of the period, by a quotation from his letter 
in reply to the Governor's communication of his ap- 
pointment to lead the expedition against the Dutch. 
"The place," says he, "is not below me nor be- 
neath me, as some deem theirs to be, but is above 
me, and far beyond any desert of mine ; and, had 
the Court been well acquainted with my insufficiency 
for such an undertaking, doubtless I should not have 
been put in nomination. Besides, it is evident to 
me, upon other considerations, I am not called of 
God unto this work at this time. The estate and 
condition of my family is such as will not admit of 
any such thing. My wife, as is well known to the 
whole town, is not only a weak woman, and has 
been so all along, but now, by reason of age, being 
sixty-seven years and upwards, and nature decaying, 
so her illness grows more strongly upon her. Never 
a day passes, but she is forced to rise at break of 
day, or before. She cannot lie, for want of breath. 
And when she is up, she cannot light a pipe of to- 
bacco, but it must be lighted for her. And she has 
never a maid. That day your letter came to my 
hands, my maid's year being out, she went away, 
and I cannot get or hear of another. And then, in 
regard of my occasions abroad, for the tending and 
looking after all my creatures, the fetching home my 
hay, that is yet at the place where it grew, getting of 



32 



wood, going to mill, and for the performing all other 
family occasions, I have now but a small Indian 
boj, about thirteen years of age, to help me. Sir, I 
can truly say, that I do not in the least waive the 
business out of an effeminate or dastardly spirit ; but 
am as freely willing to serve my king and my coun- 
try as any man whatsoever, in what I am capable 
and fitted for ; but do not understand, that a man is 
so called to serve his country with the inevitable 
ruin and destruction of his own family." 

So little was there of state, in those times, in the 
household economy of the commander-in-chief in a 
foreign war ; so little of the lust of office had the 
New England statesmen and soldiers of the seven- 
teenth century. Indeed, it is amusing and touching 
at once, to see how hard, in those days, it was to in- 
duce men to be willing to be great. " If now or 
hereafter," says a Plymouth law of 1632, "any are 
elected to the office of Governor, and will not stand 
to the election, nor hold and execute the office for 
his year, he shall be amerced in twenty pounds ster- 
ling fine ; and in case refused to be paid upon the 
lawful demand of the ensuing Governor, then to be 
levied out of the goods or chattels of the said person 
so refusing." 

When Plymouth colony came to its end, our fa- 
thers were not insensible to the interest of the occa- 



33 



sion, and their last public act was to appoint a day 
for public fasting, humiliation, and prajer. Modest, 
sublime men ; not a day of thanksgiving to praise 
God for the pregnant, the unparalleled part, which, 
in their short political life, they had been permitted 
to act in the world's history, but a day of fasting and 
humiliation to lament their sins and short-comings, 
and implore forgiveness for having done no more. 
What an outpouring of pious hearts before God must 
that day have witnessed in the sanctuary and the clos- 
et ! What would we not give to penetrate the priva- 
cy of our Barnstable Governor that day, and read, in 
some record which he might have kept, the swelling 
thoughts that must almost have burst his magnan- 
imous bosom ; — him who had stood by the cradle 
of the brave colony, had been from first to last the 
associate in weal and woe of its great and good 
men, and now had lived, himself the chief among the 
living, to see, as that day's sun went down, the last 
chapter written up in its immortal annals. 

The fall of Philip and capture of Annawon, who, 
with something of his spirit, had succeeded to the 
command of his forces, quieted the settlers in the 
possession of New England ; and the annexation of 
Plymouth to Massachusetts, destroying its distinct 
political existence, and so lessening its responsibility 
5 



34 



for public measures, as well as removing the seat of 
its government to a distance, caused its towns to 
have less concern than heretofore with the conduct 
of affairs. iVlso, as I have before remarked, in quiet 
times, the people of the Cape have always been a 
quiet people, in respect to movements which furnish 
the material of history ; being content then to ex- 
pend their energies in profitable industry, at the same 
time holding themselves ready to serve the general 
cause as often as it really needed to be served. 
That they actually had a part in what was doing 
from time to time, we learn more from scattered me- 
morials elsewhere, than from records of their own. 
In 1704, Lieutenant-Colonel John Gorham, whose 
body lies at the northeast corner of this church, com- 
manded the whale-boats in the expedition under 
Colonel Church, against the eastern French and 
Indians, as he had done fourteen years before, in 
the expedition against Canada, under Sir William 
Phips. Indeed, this command of Cape whale-boats, 
which, in the want of a better marine, seem to 
have been relied on, in those times, as a formi- 
dable force, appears to have been a kind of heir- 
loom in that family; as in 1745, at the capture of 
Louisburg, another Gorham commanded the squad- 
ron of whale-boats, which, in an attack upon the 
" island battery," so called, did the only hard fight- 



36 



ing which occurred in the course of that most mem- 
orable enterprise. 

As to matters of mere municipal concern, we find 
that nearly all, which were of interest, related to the 
proceedings of the parish, which, for seventeen years 
within the last century, continued to be coextensive 
with the town. In 1702, eighty acres of land were 
appropriated to the maintenance of a school or 
schools, and eighty more to the support of the min- 
istry. The Reverend Mr. Russell, the third minis- 
ter, called by Dr. Chauncy " an eminent and worthy 
man," died February 2d, 1711. After his death, the 
question of a division into two parishes began to be 
moved. The proposal was met by strong opposition, 
and it labored unsuccessfully for four or five years. 
A record, in 1716, of the appointment of Colonel 
Gorham and Mr. Thacher as a committee to attend 
the church meeting in behalf of the new church, 
shows, that the friends of the plan had resolved, and 
were persons of sufficient substance, to carry it into 
effect. The following year, (the meetinghouse, which 
was lately removed from the place where we stand, 
then called Cobb's Hill, having been already erected 
without a parish organization,) an ecclesiastical coun- 
cil of the neighbouring churches advised to a division 
into the East and West parishes, prescribing as a 
condition of the arrangement, that the minister, the 



36 



Reverend Jonathan Russell, who had been ordained 
the year after his father's death,* should make his 
election which of the parishes he would continue to 
serve. He elected to serve the West parish ; specify- 
ing, in his reply, that the consideration which decided 
him so to do, against inducements of a contrary 
tendency, was, that in that part of the town he had 
most friends. 

The West parish presently proceeded to build a 
new house of worship, the same which to this day 
they occupy ; and the old church, which had stood 
only since 1681 (having been then erected at the cost of 
one hundred pounds sterling, in the interval between 
the ministries of Walley and the first Russell), was 
consequently deserted. Its site was on the top 
of the hill, ten rods west of the house of the late 
Sturgis Gorham. The East parish, which bought 
the meetinghouse, lately removed, of its builders, 
for four hundred and fifty pounds, continued desti- 
tute of a minister for eight years ; at the end of 
which time, on the 12th of May, 1725, Mr. Joseph 
Green was ordained. In 1726, the peace of the 
West parish was invaded by that fruitful occasion of 
breach of harmony, difference of opinion respecting 
the manner of conducting the musical part of the 

* October 99th, 1713. 



37 



service ; and so far did the dispute proceed, that 
" the church and society," says the record, " called 
upon the civil officers to detect and bear testimony 
against such iniquity." Mr. Russell died September 
10th, 1759. His successor, ordained in October of 
the following year, was the late Reverend Oakes 
Shaw, father of the present Chief Justice of Massa- 
chusetts. The two ministries of Mr. Russell and 
Mr. Shaw covered the term of a complete century, 
within five years. Mr. Green, of the East parish, 
died October 4th, 1770, and was succeeded, April 
10th, 1771, by Mr. Timothy Hilliard, who, after 
twelve years' service, was dismissed at his own re- 
quest, and ended his days as minister of the church 
in Cambridge. 

Within the limits of the period, to which the 
events thus hastily glanced at belong, a son of Barn- 
stable had done a work, and attained a glory, scarce- 
ly equalled by any great name of the American con- 
tinent. On the 3th of February, 1723, in a farm- 
house at Great Marshes, which within a few years 
has gone to decay and been removed, but which, 
could money and art have preserved it, the gratitude 
of an emancipated people should have made to stand 
for ever, was born the pioneer of the Jtmerican Revo- 
lution, James Otis. 

I do not, fellow-citizens, call him the pioneer of 



38 



American freedom. That is an honor which belongs 
not to any man, but to the men, the brave men, — 
not one, but many, — who, with a noble scorn, left 
every thing they loved but liberty behind them on 
the other continent, and to whom and to whose 
children in the succeeding generations, here, on 
" this outside of the world," as they called it, free- 
dom was an ever-present blessing, and the inde- 
pendence that should make it securely theirs, an 
ever-present vision of the future. But, in the accom- 
plishment of all its great purposes. Providence em- 
ploys eminent instruments. The host, that moves 
on in solid column for the triumphs of humanity, has 
always a vanguard. And as long as the question 
shall be asked. Whose ardent step pressed on fore- 
most in that front rank, in the great action of Ameri- 
can independence, — whose masculine understanding 
fastened the public grasp on the immovable pillar of 
right, — whose burning eloquence fanned that flame 
in this nation's bosom, which never expires till the 
right is won, or till there is no more martyrs' blood 
left to flow ? — history will have to reply, that that il- 
lustrious instrument was the Barnstable boy whom I 
have named. 

I do not propose, fellow-citizens and friends, to 
present to you a sketch of so much as the public life 
of James Otis. It is matter of too familiar history ; 



39 



and, besides, I might as well attempt to give an ac- 
count of all of those measures, preparatory to the 
war of the Revolution, which took place between 
the time of his argument against the Writs of Assis- 
tance, in 1761, and that of the injury, which, in 
1769, impaired his capacity for the management of 
public affairs. His individual greatness came not 
the less naturally for being attached to a long Barn- 
stable ancestral line. The family, from which he 
sprang, was of ancient consideration in our town. 
John Otis, whose grandfather, of the same name, had 
emigrated from England to this country, and become 
one of the first settlers of Hingham, was born in that 
place in the year 1657, and removed, when a young 
man, to Barnstable, where he lived to attain the age 
of seventy years, having for twenty years represent- 
ed the town in the General Court, and been twenty- 
one years a Counsellor of the province, besides filling 
the offices of Judge of Probate, and Chief Justice 
of the Common Pleas. His son James, commonly 
spoken of as Colonel Otis, born on the paternal 
estate in 1702, were not his fame eclipsed by 
that of his greater son, would fill a larger place in 
history than he now does, which, however, is by no 
means small. He was educated to a mechanical em- 
ployment, but, gradually yielding to those impulses, 
which so often betoken to a wise man the destina- 



40 



tion which Providence has assigned to him, he gave 
some of his spare lime to the study of law, whence 
he became known, in the first place, as a skilful 
conveyancer, and, ultimately, rose to the best prac- 
tice at the bar in this and the neighbouring counties. 
He obtained, at the same time, distinction and in- 
fluence in public life. At the period of the arrival 
of Governor Bernard, in 1760, he was Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, of which body he was 
a member from this town. The appointment of 
Governor Hutchinson to be Chief Justice was a dis- 
appointment to the friends of Colonel Otis, it hav- 
ing been expected by them, that he would be pro- 
moted to the supreme bench on the first vacancy ; 
and Hutchinson, in his " History," under an impulse 
naturally enough operating on his mind under the 
circumstances, does not hesitate to ascribe to the 
offence then taken, the subsequent political course 
of the family. Colonel Otis was, at one time, a 
Justice of the Common Pleas and Judge of Probate, 
as well as Colonel of the county militia, while several 
of his family and relatives held other public trusts ; 
and the gossip of the day explained this on the 
ground, that Governor Bernard, perceiving the un- 
friendly impression which had been made on 
Colonel Olis's mind, endeavoured to propitiate him 
by the grant of the whole patronage of the county; 



41 



a statement, which is now of no other interest, than 
as it shows the importance attached in the popular 
estimation to his proceedings. He was several times 
negatived by Governor Bernard, when elected to the 
Council Board ; but was admitted to it by Gover- 
nor Hutchinson, in 1770, and was still a member 
of it at the beginning of the war. He died in the 
month of November, 1778. 

Of this parent, and of Mary Allyne, of Connecti- 
cut, his wife, was born James Otis, the younger, 
being the eldest of their thirteen children. He made 
his preparation for the University in his native town, 
under the care of his minister, Mr. Russell, and en- 
tered that institution at the commencement of 1739, 
just one hundred years ago. After completing the 
term of residence, he gave a year and a half more 
to a course of general study, and then entered upon 
that of the law under the direction of Jeremy Grid- 
ley, at that time the most eminent counsellor of the 
province. Having been admitted to the bar, he 
passed two years at Plymouth, in legal practice, re- 
moving, in 1749, to Boston, the great theatre of his 
fame ; where he devoted himself to professional labors, 
without evincing any ambition for public place. It 
was in 1761, that the occasion occurred which has so 
permanently connected his name with the history of 
liberty. The question, which came to involve all 



42 



that was at issue between the mother country and 
the colonies, was, whether General Search Warrants, 
called Writs of Assistance, might legally be granted 
to officers of the customs, to give them admittance 
to suspected houses. The negative was of course 
argued by Otis ; Oxenbridge Thacher, a worthy co- 
adjutor, being the junior counsel, and Gridley, Otis's 
master, appearing for the customhouse. 

Even if the time allowed, it would hardly be in 
place for me to give here a sketch of the magnificent 
argument held on that occasion by him whose fame 
is ours. What belongs to history is the eifect pro- 
duced. " Otis," said President Adams, the elder, 
who was one of his delighted hearers, and whose 
own ardor in the revolutionary cause it might not 
be too much to ascribe, in part, to the stirring in- 
fluences of that hour, " Otis was a flame of fire. 
With a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of 
research, a rapid summary of historical events and 
dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic 
glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid torrent 
of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away all before 
him. American Independence icas then and there 
born. The seeds of patriots and heroes, to defend 
the ' non sine diis animosus infans,' the god- 
befriended, vigorous child, were then and there sown. 
Every man of an immense, crowded audience, ap- 



43 



peared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take 
arms against Writs of Assistance. Then and there 
was the first scene of the first act of opposition to 
the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and 
there the child, Independence, was born. In fifteen 
years, that is, in 1776, he grew up to manhood, and 
declared himself free." The same venerable witness 
testified, on another occasion, " I do say, in the most 
solemn manner, that Mr. Otis's oration against Writs 
of Assistance breathed into this nation the breath of 
life." 

Mr. Otis was returned, the same year, for the 
town of Boston, to the House of Representatives, in 
which he immediately became the leader of the popu- 
lar party, influencing the measures of that body more 
than any other member, and preparing most of the 
important papers. During one of his speeches, the 
cry of " Treason ! " was raised, in consequence of a 
sally, similar to one in a speech of Patrick Henry, 
which excited the same cry in the Virginia House of 
Burgesses. In 1762, he published, with his name, a 
pamphlet, in respect to the importance of which I again 
quote President Adams. "Look," he says, "over the 
declarations of Rights and Wrongs, issued by Con- 
gress in 1774. Look into the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence in 1776. Look into the writings of Dr. 
Price and Dr. Priestley. Look into all the French 



44 



constitutions of government ; and, to cap the climax, 
look into Mr. Thomas Paine's ' Common Sense,' 

* Crisis,' and 'Rights of Man.' What can jou find 
that is not to be found, in solid substance, in Mr. Otis's 

* Vindication of the House of Representatives ' ? " 

But I am in danger of pursuing, — which I must 
forbid myself to do, — an account of the labors which 
shed such a glory on the crowded period of his public 
life. It was a career, alas ! short as well as bril- 
liant. Its tragical end, — more tragical than if it 
had been only death that closed it, — needs hardly 
be referred to. A blow, received in a barbarous as- 
sault by a mob of British officers in the year 1769, 
made a wreck of one of the noblest intellects which 
the inspiration of the Almighty ever endowed. That 
more than imperial voice, to whose still deepening 
echoes the world has ever since been listening, had 
lost its cunning to melt, to inform, to arouse, to af- 
fright, to overwhelm. " Like sweet bells jangled, 
harsh, and out of tune," no friend could have the 
heart to mourn, when the once wonderful mechan- 
ism was stopped and put by. Two years more wit- 
nessed a not feeble, but yet not satisfactory, strug- 
gle to persevere in the accustomed course of action. 
But at length the endeavour was sadly relinquished; 
retirement and quiet were wisely sought ; and on 
the 23d day of May, 1783, in the town of Andover, 



45 



the retreat of his feeble years, a stroke of lightning 
brought the consummation, which, under the cir- 
cumstances, it would have been cruel to lament. 

So died James Otis, the pioneer of American In- 
dependence, the illustrious Barnstable boy. In refer- 
ence, of course, to his services, some one has said, 
that " no spot in the country has made such a gift to 
the country, as the spot called Great Marshes, in 
Barnstable." Let us be content to make one excep- 
tion for the birthplace of the peerless man, who was 
" first in war, and first in peace," and then we may 
be bold to stand by the remark, without further quali- 
fication. Our great compatriot rests not in his na- 
tive earth. The soil covers him, which was the 
scene of his riper honors. But, if our ancient grave- 
yard may not have that precious deposit, where 
rather would we have it lie, than where it lies ? 
And what matter, whether buried here or there ? 
His monument is in every free land. Buried, do I 
say ? Such souls are buried nowhere. What is 
life upon earth, if it is not theirs who live in the 
wisdom of enlightened, in the spirit of free, in the 
prosperity of prosperous communities ? Who lives, 
if he does not, whose influence is felt wherever, 
upon earth, the great victories of humanity are win- 
ning ? 

Others, of this Barnstable household, deserved 



46 



well of their country. Two brothers of James Otis, 
the younger, are well remembered by many of us ; 
Joseph, commonly known as General Otis, who 
passed his life in his native town, filling several im- 
portant municipal and state offices, and taking a lead 
in the revolutionary movements of this section of the 
State, and who died here in the office of Collector of 
the Customs ; and Samuel Allyne, who was succes- 
sively a member of the Provincial Board of War, 
Commissary of the Provincial Army, a member from 
Boston of the Legislature of the Commonwealth, a 
Representative in the last Congress under the Con- 
federation, and Secretary of the United States' Sen- 
ate, under the Federal Constitution ; which last trust, 
through all changes of parties, he retained till his 
death, in 1814. He was father of our eminent con- 
temporary, Harrison Gray Otis. 

James Otis, as we have seen, was incapacitated 
for public action, before the revolutionary struggle, 
for which he had prepared the way, came on ; though 
he lived to see its happy close. Had the measures of 
the town of Barnstable, as of other Massachusetts 
towns, in relation to that conflict, been registered at 
the time, they would make a history of the most ani- 
mated interest. But the village fathers little ima- 
gined how the eye of posterity would strain after 
every simple record they should leave. What they 



47 



did, they did for the peace of their firesides, for 
the safety of their country, for the satisfaction of 
their consciences and their feelings ; that it should 
make them famous, was a thing they did not so 
much as dream of. But this unconsciousness of the 
importance of the part they were acting, while it 
leaves their records much more scanty than could be 
wished, only gives them the more profound interest as 
far as they go ; since we are sure, that they repre- 
sent to us, in the barest simplicity of truth, the feel- 
ing and the purpose of the passing hour. Access has 
kindly been furnished me to a little journal kept 
about the beginning of the revolutionary war, by Eli 
Phinney, a gentleman of distinction in the town, and 
frequently employed in municipal trusts. It was 
written solely for private use, and was principally 
employed about private transactions ; but occasion- 
ally, amidst the details of such matters as the get- 
ting in of hay, the sorting out of winter fodder for 
cattle, the mending of a fence, sickness in the fami- 
ily and the remedies applied, a ride to one neighbour's, 
and an evening's visit from another, is a passing ref- 
erence to what was going on in the larger world ; 
and it may be supposed to be a fair specimen of a 
hundred such journals kept at the time, but which 
no care was taken to preserve. There are passages 
which carry us back to the heroic age of the nation, 



48 



with a vivid impression of the reality of the passing 
scene. For a single example, there are a (ew lines 
relating to the stir made at this place by the first 
news of the Lexington fight ; — Lexington being, as 
you know, some eighty miles from Barnstable, the 
means of communication being very different from 
what they now are, and great part of the people of 
the latter place having probably not so much as 
known of the existence of the former, till they heard 
that the blood of Massachusetts men had been shed 
there by British mercenaries. Here is the record I 
speak of. 

"20^A ^pril, Thursday. Received the dreadful 
news of an engagement." The engagement did not 
terminate till Wednesday at evening ; and yet, on 
Thursday, they knew of it on the Cape. There 
were then no railroads, nor so much as fast coaches ; 
if there had been, the news could not have waited 
for them ; it flew through Massachusetts as if the 
indignant winds of Massachusetts had charge of it. 
" Received the dreadful news of an engagement be- 
tween the Regulars and Provincials, at Lexington." 
" Dreadful," Deacon Phinney calls it on Thursday 
the 20th ; and well he might, being a man of peace. 
But, how dreadful ? Did he mean to say it was news 
to be frightened at ? And were the people, on Fri- 



49 



day, wondering what would come next, or sending 
up their submission to General Gage ? Let us see. 

"21s^ ^flpril^ Friday. Soldiers mustered. Sent 
off nineteen men from our company." And I war- 
rant, fellow-citizens and friends, those nineteen stout 
Barnstable frames reported themselves at General 
Ward's head-quarters at Cambridge as soon as na- 
ture's vehicles could bring them there. 

But here was a spasm. Three days and nights 
passed, and they had time to sleep over their rage, 
and go to church too, and get calm. What were they 
about at the end of that time ? In what mood did 
they begin the next week ? Let us ask our concise 
chronicler. 

"24^A ^pril, Monday. Training our company." 
They did not know what, by this time, might 
have become of the nineteen men, and they meant 
that, if need should be, there should be ten times 
nineteen to follow them. Training our company! 
There could hardly be a greater economy of words. 
But imagination easily fills up the picture. Friday, 
they had shaken hands with their nineteen friends, 
selected perhaps as readiest for the emergency, as 
having no wives or children to provide for. Satur- 
day, the old muskets of the French war had been 
cleaned, the flints and cartridge-boxes looked to, 
and blankets folded in the compact knapsack by 



50 



the loving care of trembling hands. Sunday, the 
favor of the God of justice and the God of hosts had 
been reverently sought; and nothing remained but to 
train our company, as our Deacon says, on Monday 
morning, and take such pains as might yet be taken, 
in order that the next party that went should be pre- 
pared to do its best measure of service. Yes, some- 
thing, it seems, did remain in Barnstable, as was then 
found, towards the doing of New-England justice on 
outrageous oppression ; but it was not suffered to re- 
main long. This was Monday the 24th. Here is 
the record of the next day. 

" Tuesday, 25th Jlpril. Town meeting." They 
had had no town meeting till they found there was 
something to be done at it ; getting together to ha- 
rangue and pass resolutions was not a thing in their 
way. But, when Monday showed that something 
was to be done, it did not take them long to circu- 
late a warrant. Barnstable sands are faster travelled 
over, on occasion, than strangers would suppose. 

" Tuesday 25th. Town meeting to raise money 
to buy guns, Sec. Voted three hundred pounds for a 
chest of arms and some ammunition." 

This despatched, the next entry is, "28th. Plough- 
ed with three teams ; " and so the Diary goes back 
again, for the present, to its usual quiet jog over the 
farm. 



51 



An anecdote is related by Mr. Tudor, in his " Life 
of Otis," who says he had it from a living witness, 
which must have been connected with the marching 
of the first nineteen men, though Mr. Tudor errone- 
ously speaks of " a company" having been despatched 
on the first day. " In the front rank, there was a 
young man, the son of a respectable farmer, and his 
only child. In marching from the village, as they 
passed his house, he came out to meet them. There 
was a momentary halt. The drum and fife paused 
for an instant. The father, suppressing a strong and 
evident emotion, said, ' God be with you all, my 
friends ; and, John, if you, my son, are called into 
battle, take care that you behave like a man, or else 
let me never see your face again.' The march was 
resumed, while a tear started into every eye." Well 
it might. The rhetoric of that speech might not be 
Greek; but the spirit was, — it was Spartan. There 
is commonly something else to be said to only sons, 
who are walking up to a ridge of bayonets. 

What I have read gives some idea of the state of 
mind in Barnstable, at the beginning of the revolu- 
tionary contest of arms. But the Revolution did not 
begin when New England blood, terribly avenged 
before the setting of the sun, stained the meeting- 
house green at Lexington. Let us go a little back, 
and, with some help of the town records, see how 



52 



our fathers stood affected while affairs were ripening 
for that bloody arbitration. I premise, that, in look- 
ing at the Barnstable documents of that trying time, 
I have found no reason whatever to suppose, that 
foreign aid was sought in preparing them, as was 
sometimes in other places done, and certainly with- 
out the smallest impropriety.* Our Barnstable pa- 
pers are not marked by the finish of an elaborate 
scholarship, but they are stamped with the clear and 
stern sense of men, who are no more to be cajoled 
out of their rights, than to be violently spoiled of 
them ; who can command the arguments of strong 
heads, as well as of strong arms, to maintain what is 
rightfully theirs. On the 26th of September, 1774, 
during the operation of the Boston Port Bill, and the 
sitting of the General Court at Salem, the town held 
a meeting to instruct its representative, the late Hon- 
orable Daniel Davis, senior. The form of instruc- 
tions adopted, after expressing the town's persuasion, 
that " it will be agreeable to him to receive some 
instructions relative to his conduct in such a day as 
this is, notwithstanding its confidence in his wisdom 
and prudence to manage the public affairs in this 
time of difficulty, darkness, and distress," goes on ; 

* For instance, the original draft of the famous resolutions of Peters- 
ham, in Worcester County, was found among the papers of Josiah Quin- 
cy, Jr. 



53 



" We therefore, in the first place, instruct you, 
that you do all in your power to have those of our 
liberlies that are wrested from us by arbitrary meas- 
ures restored, and that those that are left be inviola- 
bly preserved." 

So much for the common cause. Next, fellow- 
citizens of Boston, see what care your Barnstable 
compatriots took of you. 

"2dly. That, in conjunction with your brethren of 
the House of Representatives, you use every legal 
and constitutional method to have the port of Bos- 
ton opened, and made as free as before the late act of 
Parliament was made for blocking up the same." 
There is no want of explicitness in this specification. 

" 3dly. That you do not, in any instance, act in 
conformity to the late oppressive act of Parliament, 
entitled, ' An Act for the better regulating the gov- 
ernment of Massachusetts Bay, in New England.' " 

This, again, is plain New-England English. And 
the next is no less so. 

" 4thly. That you do not join in any business with 
the new and unconstitutional Council, said to be ap- 
pointed by mandamus, in consequence of the before- 
mentioned act. 

" 5thly. That you join in urging it on the Governor, 
that he will be pleased to call to his assistance and 



54 



advice the standing Council of the Province, chosen 
for the current year, agreeably to the charter." 

So much for the ceremonious civility, which men 
in earnest sometimes use, in the first resort, when 
they are resolved, in the last, to have their own way. 
The next clause may serve as a comment on its 
meaning, though the language rmis in a little differ- 
ent strain. 

" 6thly. In case the Governor shall dissolve the 
House of Representatives, you are instructed to join 
with your brethren to resolve yourselves into a Pro- 
vincial Congress, in order to consult and determine 
the true interest of his Majesty, and the peace, wel- 
fare, and prosperity of this Province." 

So ends the matter of business. Then comes the 
devout and kindly close. 

" Lastly. We wish you a prosperous journey, and 
that you may have the aid and assistance of the Di- 
vine Spirit, to guide and conduct you in your arduous 
undertaking." 

In the war which followed, Barnstable, though re- 
mote from the scene of regular conflict, had its full 
share of the disasters of the time. It had more than 
its share, because of its great dependence on the oc- 
cupations of commerce and the fisheries, which were 
nearly annihilated by the superior marine of the en- 
emy. The public burdens often pressed upon the 



55 



point of possible endurance ; but they never brought 
out any symptoms of faltering in the cause. In the 
strong excitement which acted on men's minds, and 
the diversity of opinions which from time to time 
naturally arose on the practical question, whether, in 
a given case, measures of greater energy or greater 
caution would best accomplish the end alike aimed 
at by all, their representative in the General Court 
became at one period suspected, by the majority of 
his associates, of being cool in his attachment to 
the cause ; but, when the town expressed their con- 
tinued confidence in him by repeated reelections, it 
was not on the ground of any willingness to connive 
at such coolness, supposing it to exist, but because, 
as they alleged in their vote upon the subject, they 
had " by long experience found the said representa- 
tive to be, in their best judgment, of a steady, unre- 
mitting zeal in their country's cause ; and that, on all 
occasions since the commencement of hostilities be- 
tween Great Britain and the United States of Amer- 
ica, he had been ready to afford them his best advice 
and assistance in raising men and money for carrying 
on the war with the enemy ; and in justice to him 
and to ourselves," they continue, " we must declare 
to the world, we know of no person among us, let 
his office or character be what it may, that has shown 
greater zeal for the defence and safety of his coun- 



56 



try." Money was liberally raised from time to time, 
to increase the bounty offered by the Commonwealth 
for enlistments in the Continental service. In the 
month of the Declaration of Independence, for exam- 
ple, I find a vote to raise one hundred and seventy- 
three pounds, six shillings, and eight pence, to be 
paid to thirteen able-bodied men, over and above what 
was granted by the colony, to serve in the army of the 
United Colonies ; and, in the spring of the following 
year, another vote, to give " fourteen pounds to each 
man that shall engage for three years, or ten pounds 
for each man that shall engage for ten months." 
Considering the habits of the Cape Cod people, it 
is to be presumed that they did at least as much 
service in the war of Independence at sea as on 
shore. But I have not perceived in what way to 
obtain evidence of the particular amount of service, 
rendered by them on what may be almost called their 
native element ; the less so, as the naval war of the 
Revolution was, in great part, carried on by private- 
armed vessels. A single significant fact, however, 
in this connexion, is, that, when the ill-fated priva- 
teer, The Jlrnold, Captain James Magee, which sailed 
on the 30th of December, 1778, from Boston, went on 
shore at Plymouth the same night in a snow-storm, 
out of sixty-eight men of her company, who per- 
ished, ten were from this town. 



57 



When the formation of a State constitution was pro- 
posed, Barnstable insisted, in the first place, that, 
whatever form of government the legislature might 
adopt, should be submitted to the people for ratification 
in their primary assemblies ; and afterwards was con- 
stantly strenuous for the measure which was ulti- 
mately adopted, that of calling a special convention 
of delegates chosen for the purpose, inasmuch as the 
duties perpetually pressing upon the legislature were 
such as to disqualify them for doing such a work 
with sufficient deliberation. In respect to the Arti- 
cles of Confederation between the thirteen States, 
adopted in 1778, it manifested great jealousy. The 
Plymouth spirit, which, nearly a century before, had 
been shy of a union with Massachusetts, was now 
equally averse to any approach to a consolidated 
government, which should implicate the concerns of 
Massachusetts too much with those of States of a 
different parentage ; and it is striking to see how 
early was urged, among the vigilant yeomanry of 
our own towns, that doctrine, which since, more 
matured, and applied to a different instrument, has 
been known as the Virginia and the Carolina Doctrine 
of State Rights. " It appears to us," say the Barn- 
stable instructions, " that the power of Congress 
[that is, by the proposed Articles of Confederation] 
is too great. If the power of borrowing money and 

8 



58 



emitting bills on the credit of the United States, 
without any limitation and check, also regulating 
and directing the whole land and naval force of the 
States, is for ever hereafter vested in one supreme 
power, the future General Congress, we have no 
great consolation in contemplating the sovereignty, 
freedom, independence, power, jurisdiction, and right, 
with them remaining. You are accordingly to use 
your power, that none of these general powers be 
for ever delegated to future general Congresses. But 
if, during the present arduous conflict with Great 
Britain, it may be judged necessary to vest such 
extra powers in the Continental Congress, we will 
trust, that you will use your endeavours, that the 
same shall be but temporary, and for ever determine 
the case at the conclusion of the present unhappy 
war." 

Independence was won. The Federal Constitu- 
tion was adopted. A half century was finished, a 
few months ago, since it went into operation, giving 
to sense, principle, industry, courage, sobriety, en- 
terprise, fair play to do their proper work ; and Barn- 
stable has become, what to-day we see it. What 
do we see it to-day ? It meets our view with all 
tokens of being the seat of an intelligent, virtuous, 
efficient population. We see its harbour a scene of 
cheerful activity. In its fields, we look at substan- 



59 



tial harvests, — thanks to the skill that rears them, — 
growing out of what looks to us like a very scanty 
soil. Its churches and school-houses catch our eye 
as we pass, proclaiming how God is reverenced, and 
how knowledge is prized. The ornaments of its dwel- 
lings, — tributes from every foreign clime, — tell us 
how few households have reared those " home-keep- 
ing youth," who, if the old bard may be trusted, 
" have ever homely wits." There are other things, 
which we do not see. We see no beggars, no idlers, 
no sots. The population of the town is over four 
thousand ; its poor-house has eighteen tenants. The 
population of the county is thirty-two thousand ; in 
its gaol there are three prisoners, and those three are 
foreigners. If I am correctly informed, there is not 
a licensed public house in the county, nor has been 
these three years. Its whole aspect is, to the agricul- 
tural school of economists, one perplexity and marvel. 
Being desirous of seeing, with my own eyes, what 
I had heard of as the heau ideal of a sand-bank, 
I borrowed, three or four weeks ago, of two of my 
Barnstable friends, a yacht of theirs, — a craft so 
graceful and luxurious, that they had better not let 
it be seen by any travelling prince, if they do not 
mean that he shall covet it, — and that night I 
dropped its anchor in that harbour of Provincetown, 
where John Carver, the Leyden pilgrim, set the first 



60 



name, that ever was set, to a primary constitution of 
government. When the morrow's dawn showed me 
what is there called land, and allowed me to tread 
it, I was prepared to say, with the Queen of Sheba, 
that the half had not been told me. Sand-banks ! 
I thought I knew what they were before. I thought 
I had seen them. But here was what distanced all 
competition. The mass of sand was almost as ho- 
mogeneous and unbroken, as that of water around a 
ship in the mid Atlantic. In one or two hollows 
between the undulations, (I would not positively 
testify to more than one,) there was what seemed 
like a bowl-full of earth, — not much more than 
could be put into the Warwick vase ; and from this, 
(by most careful husbandry it must have been,) 
had been partly furnished a meal of such relish, 
that, at least to an appetite edged by the tonic virtue 
of the salt air, it could hardly have been surpassed by 
the daintiest Parisian board. One looked around, and 
asked himself how there could be here any such 
thing as real estate, any land-titles, any metes and 
bounds, where that which was to be bounded seemed 
so purely an accident of the last northeaster. Hear 
the rest, and wonder, you, who, on some southern sa- 
vanna, plough a black soil, deeper than is much of the 
water, that our homeward-bound Barnstable keels 
have to furrow. In that harbour, from which it was 



61 



clear there could be nothing to carry away, and to 
which it seemed a mystery how there could be a mo- 
tive to bring any thing, the morning sun was flashing 
on the moist sides of an anchored fleet of fishing ves- 
sels. A row of dwellings, of substantial structure, and 
some of them not inelegant, lined the street, along 
which foot-passengers are recently, for the first time, 
helped over the sand by a plank side-walk, built 
by means of the town's share in the lately dis- 
tributed surplus revenue. Provincetown, which had 
a right, on this occasion, to receive so much money, 
has also plenty of private funds of its citizens to 
lend, and has lately had a bank incorporated, to 
lend it with the more advantage. I took to the 
sea again ; for man and water there are in such 
close alliance, that no conveyance was to be had to 
enable me to prosecute by land the journey which 
I had meditated along the length of the Cape ; and 
passing through a scene still all alive with this min- 
iature navigation, along a shore which seemed built 
of salt-works, I cast anchor again, twenty miles fur- 
ther down. Here the soil proved some shades less 
penurious, though far enough still from rich, accord- 
ing to any standard commonly acknowledged. But 
here still, — and so it is everywhere, from the Dan 
to the Beersheba of the Cape, — was movement, 
system, competence, prosperity. There was no " na- 



62 



kedness of" any thing but " the land" to be spied out. 
I saw not, upon the long road, a single house, which did 
not appear whole, sufficient, and comfortable ; nor 
was there one of the several which 1 entered, where 
the neatness and comfort within did not more than 
keep the promise of the neatness and good order with- 
out. Will any one here tell me, that ever, along the 
whole length of the Cape, he saw or heard of a 
broken pane of glass, supplied by an old hat or an 
old garment, to keep out the weather ? 

Now, I ask, how is all this, which I have been 
feebly describing, to be unriddled ? What have such 
elements to do with such a result ? What does 
such a growth on such a soil, if, by courtesy, we 
are so to call it, mean ? It means, that men dwell 
there ; that there are manly minds and manly hearts ; 
and that for such, the benignant nature within sup- 
plies what frowning nature without has denied. 

The occupations of Barnstable and its neighbour 
towns continue, substantially, what they have been 
in the past generations, though, from their nature, 
sharing in the extension of the general wealth and 
prosperity of the country. The soil, wherever there 
is more or less of it, is cultivated, and the manu- 
facture of salt is carried on upon a large scale ; but 
navigation, employed in the fisheries and in home 
and foreign commerce, is the great, active, and 



63 



profitable interest. Wherever, over the world, you 
see the stars and stripes floating, you may have good 
hope, that, beneath them, some one will be found, 
who can tell you the soundings of Barnstable, or 
Wellfleet, or Chatham harbour. The names, familiar 
in our town and county, figure among those of the 
hardy, energetic, and scientific navigators, who bring 
into our ports the wealth of either India, and of the 
conductors of those floating palaces, which, with 
their speed and security, make us almost feel as if 
we lived again next door to our English kindred ; 
while those names almost monopolize the shipping- 
papers of the vessels, which carry on the busy coast- 
ing trade between the cities of our Atlantic shore. 
It is believed, that, at this time, there are as many 
as two hundred and fifty citizens of the town, either 
masters or mates of vessels of diflerent descrip- 
tions. Randolph, writing in 1676, said of this, 
as of other parts of Plymouth colony, that it was 
"supplied with all foreign commodities from Boston." 
He forgot to say who it was, that brought those 
foreign commodities to Boston, so that they might 
be there to be brought away. The duck does 
not take to the water with a surer instinct than 
the Barnstable boy. He leaps from his leading- 
strings into the shrouds. It is but a bound from the 
mother's lap to the mast-head. He boxes the com- 



64 



pass in his infant soliloquies. He can hand, reef, 
and steer, by the time he flies a kite. The ambition 
of his youth is, to " witch the world with noble sea- 
manship " ; and his manly " march is on the moun- 
tain wave, his home " — no, no! — I am too fast, — 
his " home is not upon the deep," and, in his widest 
wanderings, he never forgets that it is not. His 
home stands on firm land, nestled among some light- 
houses, which, in the blackest midnight of a polar 
winter, his mind's eye sees, casting their serene ra- 
diance over the wide waters, to guide him back to 
the goal, as it was the starting-place, of life's varied 
voyage. While he keeps the long night-watches, 
under the Cross of the southern hemisphere, his spirit 
is travelling half around the globe to look in at the 
fireside, where, the household duties of the day gone 
through, the mother, or the sister, or the wife, or the 
dear friend that is not wife, but shall be, is mus- 
ing on her absent sailor. The gales of Cape Horn, 
or the monsoons of the Indian sea, are piping in his 
cordage ; but clearer, and through and above all their 
roar, his ear is drinking in the low, sweet voice, that 
is lulling here his infant's distant slumber. And, 
whether he eyes, with the conscious pride of art, the 
" thing of life " he is managing, as, all tight and 
trim, her upper rigging sent down, she leaps, free 
and sure-footed, poised by a scant edge of main-top- 



65 



sail, from peak to peak of the now rising, now sub- 
siding, watery Alps, while his hoarse voice, amid the 
mad uproar of the elements, guides her fierce way as 
if by magic, — or whether, on the quiet Sabbath, in 
the garish sunset, or beneath the broad enveloping 
moonlight, his beautiful vessel skims under the line, 
over the level floor of ocean, with all her snowy tog- 
ging (I should say her bravery) set, as gentle and 
noiseless as a flock of white doves, — still, still, loved 
spot of his nativity, 

"Where'er he roams, whatever reahiis to see, 
His heai-t, untravelled, fondly turns to thee." 

The first sign, from which the neighbours gather that 
the lad has been prospering, is, that the old people's 
house puts on a new coat of shingles, and another cow, 
if there needs one, is seen cropping their pasture ; his 
second lucky adventure makes his younger brothers 
and sisters happy the next time they go abroad, 
not so much for the gayer figure it has enabled them 
to make, as because it betokens how kindly they were 
thought of by one so far away ; and the third, — the 
third is very apt to serve as an occasion for whisper- 
ing in some not reluctant ear, that it is almost time 
he had a snug home of his own, where he could be 
made more comfortable after these tedious voyages. 
I believe it was Cotton Mather, who, in speaking 
of the mother of one of his worthies, said, " She was 
9 



66 



just the parent one might have desired to be born 
of." He did not mean to disparage other people's 
mothers, — he was too well-bred an historian for 
that ; nor do we mean to offer any slight to the 
places of other people's origin, if we ask whether 
there is any other place, to which, in preference to 
this, a reasonable man might reasonably desire to 
trace his own. We arrogate no more than the 
cautious Ulysses did of old, when he said of his flat 
and rocky Ithaca, 

" Rugged she is, but fruitful nurse of sons 
Magnanimous ; nor shall these eyes behold 
Elsewhere an object dear and sweet as she." 

What a gem upon the bosom of the fair globe, is the 
coast of this our Massachusetts Bay ! What a grace 
sits upon its inland sweep of inclosing hills in summer ! 
What a stern sublimity upon its rock-indented ocean 
boundary ! How stately does it wear its naval crown ! 
How it extends the graceful arms of its Capes, as it 
were to greet the affianced Ocean like a bride. And 
of what a grand action has it been the theatre, in the 
space of a short two hundred years. The books tell 
of the glory of the Mediterranean sea, and how civil- 
ization, knowledge, liberty, art, went forth from its 
borders, on their errands of blessing to the world ; 
and surely Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, — these are 
great names, which it thrills and nerves one to utter. 



67 



But they left a great work still to be done for hu- 
manity. It remained that a martyr-voice should be 
raised for the equal rights of man. The impartial 
Providence, that designed that this hemisphere, too, 
should not be without his glory, ordained, that from 
the honored coast of this Bay those glad tidings of 
great joy should be published to the nations ; and 
where along its beach has the beneficent doctrine 
found truer advocates, and where have example and 
experience better manifested its beneficent power, 
than in the midst of that very population, whose an- 
niversary we are keeping ? 

Fellow-citizens and friends ! we have been look- 
ing to-day at the records of the acts and sacri- 
fices of the God-directed bearers of that message. 
We have been listening to the voices of those, 
who, " though dead, yet speak " to us in the meek- 
ness and majesty of a high-principled wisdom. We 
have turned away to-day from the bustling present, 
to live for an hour in the solemn and monitory 
past. We have been wandering, as it were, among 
the tombs of our fathers. Nay, here are their sa- 
cred relics, close by us. O for some one, with 
a double portion of the spirit of " Old Mortality " 
to do them justice ! for, to my thinking, there are 
few spots of the earth of such eloquent sublim- 
ity, as one of these our old Massachusetts burying- 



68 



grounds. There is a universally admired English po- 
em, which has for its subject " a country church- 
yard." But the writer, perforce, wanted some ele- 
ments of poetical combination which we could have 
supplied to him. In his country, only the memorials 
of humble life are to be read in churchyards. Great- 
ness lies in cathedral state, not under the solemn 
cope of heaven, beneath the watching stars and the 
weeping clouds, but in Gothic aisles, and beneath 
overshadowing banners. There, 

" Beneath the rugged elms, the yew-tree's shade, 

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 

The rude forefatiiers of the hamlet sleep." 

And they sleep apart from the dust which a nation's 
reverence enshrines. Here greatness gives itself back 
to nature ; and they who, living, have done earth 
good service, nestle in death to her matron bosom. 
Around us, beneath the bosom of the soil their vir- 
tues sanctified, our " forefathers of the hamlet " lie. 
But more were they than that. They were, at the 
same time, the statesmen and soldiers of an infant 
commonwealth, famous, and to be famous through all 
time, for costly well-deservings to the cause of truth 
and freedom and righteousness, the cause of man 
and of God. Bend, inspired builder of the lofty 
line, bend over those lowly foreign graves, and pour 



69 



out the strains, that make what they sing immortal. 
But, were it mine to woo the Muse, let me have 
rather for my theme one of those congregations of 
the dead, where not lowliness alone, but lowliness 
and greatness, both sleeping together under one 
sod, may prompt the sonorous anthem. Let me be 
warmed rather, while I lean over one of those stones 
of ours, that bear the legend of men as simple and 
modest as hamlet ever nurtured, yet as valiant and 
true as ever marshalled the perilous battle, and as 
prudent and grave as ever sat in an empire's council- 
chambers. Rude poetry enough we have among our 
inscriptions ; but then, what is it, that, in their un- 
tuned numbers, they tell of? They tell of the unam- 
bitious lives, — none could be more so, — of an in- 
dustrious yeomanry ; but they tell, too, of great 
principles, great dangers, great deeds. There lie the 
venerable dead, while we speak their praises, near 
enough for the echo to be sent back to us from the 
hollow ground. They lie mute, and unconscious of 
their glory. 

" The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
The cock's shrill clarion, and the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed." 

But, at sterner rousings than the cock's shrill clarion 
and the swallow's twitter, were the lowly beds of 



70 



those now unconscious sleepers used to be forsaken. 
They have shaken off sleep erewhile in the silent 
midnight, to catch again the distant sound which might 
prove to be the signal of barbarian assault upon the 
home of all they held dearest. From short slumbers 
in woods, and marshes, and snow, the reveille beat 
has roused them to put them again upon the bloody 
and fiery track of the Indian spoiler. The morning 
gun from distant fortresses, where the flaunting lily 
waved in short-lived defiance, has full often been 
their rough summons to a day of desperate duty. 
Let us repress a natural smile at the poetry, and 
own w^hat choice materials for poetry may be clothed 
in very plain adornments. Some " unlettered Muse " 
has inscribed as follows, over the hamlet father, who 
lies nearest to us. 

" Here lies a valiant hero, and a saint, 
A judge, a justice, whom no vice could taint ; 
A perfect lover of his country's cause, 
Her lives, religion, properties, and laws ; 
Who, in his young, yea, very youthful years. 
Took up his sword 'gainst Philip and his peers." 

There is more, but I read no further. Youthful ad- 
venture, patriotic daring, gravity in age, the dignity 
of irreproachable office, a community's successful 
championship, saintly piety, honor in death, = — these 
make the intelligible heraldic blazonry, that meetly 
graces a Barnstable tombstone. 



71 



We have moved to-day, fellow-citizens and friends, 
among the graves of our fathers. We are about to 
turn away from them. Let them be for altars first, 
where we will pledge ourselves to one another, never 
to dishonor our fathers' memory. Did I say, that they 
sleep in their glory unconsciously around us ? Who 
knows that ? Who knows but that Lothrop, and 
Hinckley, and Walley, and Robinson, and Russell, 
and Fuller, and all the sainted company, have been 
with us, and are with us, in more intimate presence and 
communion than this blinding veil of flesh permits us 
to see ? If it be so, be it our care, that no cloud of 
our base engendering be permitted to pass over the 
solemn joy of their spirits. And if the third century 
of Barnstable may not be what those two ages were, 
whose days on this day are numbered and finished, 
at least be it our care, that that portion of it which 
we are to provide for shall be such, that they who 
come after us shall not be ashamed to tell its story. 



CAMBRIDGE: 
FOLSOM, WELLS, AND THURSTON, 

PRINTERS 10 THE UNIVERSITT. 



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